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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24096451">when i learn to fly</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origamidragons/pseuds/Origamidragons'>Origamidragons</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>i'll fly away [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>One Piece</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Wings, Gen, Pre-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 23:15:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,919</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24096451</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origamidragons/pseuds/Origamidragons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“You can’t be scared of falling,” Sabo said, sounding slightly exasperated. And then, “You <i>bounce</i>.” </p><p>Luffy, predictably, immediately bristled. “I’m not scared of anything! I jus’ don’t know what I’m supposed to do once I’m falling!” </p><p>“You open your wings,” Ace said dryly, “and you flap ‘em.”</p><p>(Some scenes about some brothers, in an AU where everyone is born with wings.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Monkey D. Luffy &amp; Portgas D. Ace &amp; Sabo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>i'll fly away [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738525</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>372</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>when i learn to fly</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Oi, Ace.”</p><p>Ace paused with one hand on the doorframe, glared back over his shoulder. “What?”</p><p>There was a shuffle of dusty white and grey feathers, and then a wad of yellow fabric was lobbed at him underhand. He snatched it out of the air just before it could hit him in the face and frowned at it, shaking it out. It was a shirt, oversized. No slits in the back.</p><p>“Wear that if you’re gonna head into town,” Dadan said. “Over your wings.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>There was a huff. “Everybody still remembers the newspapers, kid. Gold Roger grinning on the execution stand with those goddamn demon wings blocking out the sky? Fresh on folks’ minds, yet. Best you don’t go giving them any ideas, now yours are grown out proper.”</p><p>“That’s not fair,” Ace protested.</p><p>“Life ain’t fair.”</p><p>Ace scowled at her, but relented. “Whatever,” he muttered, shrugging the baggy t-shirt on over his head as he stepped out into the sunlight, slamming the door shut behind him. The shirt was too big, and reached halfway to his knees.</p><p>Sometimes he wished he had wings like Dadan’s, not that he’d ever stoop low enough to tell <em>her</em> that. Hers were nondescript, shades of grey and black and white. Pigeon wings. They could’ve been pretty, maybe, if she bothered to keep them clean. If he had wings like that, he wouldn’t have to wear a stupid too-big shirt. Nobody would look twice at him.</p><p>Instead, he had demon wings, featherless black things of taut skin and bone. Not like anyone’s he’d ever seen, except Gramps, and his at least were white. Not that he wanted to be anything like the old man, either, anyways.</p><p>He clenched his jaw and ground his teeth together, abruptly furious with Dadan and Gramps and the world and everyone in it, and stormed towards town to find a fight.</p><p>When he crossed back into the forest from the edge of the dump, it was four hours later, and his face was red from exertion and slick with sweat and one of his eyes was swelling up badly enough that he couldn’t really see out of it, sending throbbing pains to the back of his skull.</p><p>He wasn’t really any less angry than he was when he left, but he was tired and his body was aching and that was as close as he ever got, so it would have to do.</p><p>The big stupid baggy shirt abruptly felt suffocating- now that it was soaked through with sweat, it <em>clung</em> to the folds of his wings in a way that was almost unspeakably uncomfortable. It probably wouldn’t be a problem if he had feathers, a realization that darkened his mood even further.</p><p>Cursing under his breath, he yanked the stupid shirt over his head and balled it up, only barely restraining the urge to hurl it into the bushes. He settled instead for stretching his wings open for the first time that day, letting them unfold to their full width, dark in his peripheral vision. The cool afternoon air felt good, after so long stuck under the shirt.</p><p>At least everything wasn’t <em>completely</em> terrible.</p><p>“Your wings are cool!” someone said, voice bright and young, and Ace froze in place, wings snapping shut defensively as his head jerked up, searching for the source of the voice. After a moment of squinting, he found it- a boy about his age sitting on a branch about fifteen feet above his head, looking curiously down at him.</p><p>Ace met the other boy’s inquisitive look with a scowl. “Who’re you?” he snapped.</p><p>“‘m Sabo,” the other boy- Sabo- answered easily. “I haven’t seen you in town before- who’re you?”</p><p>“Why should I tell you?”</p><p>“I told <em>you</em>,” Sabo pointed out.</p><p>Which- was annoyingly true. Ace folded his arms and glared up into the tree canopy. “Ace,” he finally snapped. “Portgas D. Ace.”</p><p>Sabo grinned, and then slid off of the tree branch and into freefall. His wings snapped open to control his descent- they were blue, edged with white and black, still thick with downy baby fluff. Not grown enough to fly properly yet, same as Ace’s own. He landed cleanly, if a little heavily, scuffed black shoes thudding onto the mossy forest floor.</p><p>Now that he was closer, no longer half-hidden by the shifting shadows of the canopy and the sun in Ace’s eyes, he could make out more about the other boy. His clothes looked- not <em>nice</em>, exactly, but like they had been once, though now they were ripped and worn and caked with dirt and dust.</p><p>“You live in town?” Sabo asked. “I don’t see other kids ‘round Grey Terminal lots.”</p><p>“I live up the mountain,” Ace answered, and then, trying to sound as threatening as he possibly could, added, “I’m a bandit.”</p><p>Rather than being intimidated in the slightest, though, Sabo just looked curious, and a little excited. “Really? Cool!”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ace said, and grinned without any joy, flaring his wings out. “So I could kill you if I wanted.”</p><p>Sabo didn’t quail, or run. Sabo grinned back, and said, “Wanna try?”</p><p>Ace tried.</p><p>Sabo was small, even a little shorter than Ace himself, but he was <em>fast</em>, and scrappy, and a challenge to fight in a way none of the drunken morons in town ever were, for all that he was a fraction of their height, and despite himself Ace found his grin turning real as he tackled Sabo back into the moss and immediately had to yank back his hand to stop it getting bit.</p><p>Sabo fought with his <em>wings</em>, too, in a way that most people didn’t- usually, people were too scared of getting them hurt or breaking the flight feathers, but Sabo used his to bat Ace’s arms away or blow dust into his eyes, and as they tussled, Ace found himself doing the same.</p><p>Somewhere between giving Sabo a black eye to match the one he already had and getting a bloody nose in return, Ace decided he liked Sabo.</p><p>In the end, neither of them won so much as they both ran out of energy at about the same time and collapsed back into the grass in a mutual unspoken truce. Ace snuffled at the blood clogging his nose, and scrabbled around in the greenery for the discarded stupid yellow shirt so he could wipe his face on it. After a moment, he found it, and then wordlessly tossed it over to Sabo, who did likewise, rubbing away a trickle of blood that had been running down from his brow.</p><p>“Didja mean it?” Ace asked, his voice a little stuffy from his blocked nose.</p><p>Sabo paused. “What?”</p><p>“‘Bout my wings.”</p><p>“Yeah, course!” Sabo said, like it was obvious. “Never seen wings like that before. They’re cool.”</p><p>“Oh,” Ace said, and didn’t say anything else. Silence unspooled between them for a long minute.</p><p>“Hey, are you really a bandit?” Sabo asked.</p><p>Ace frowned up at the sky. “Kinda. I live with bandits. Don’t wanna be one, though.”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ace said, and stared up at the endless blue of the sky and imagined it was the ocean. “Someday, I’m gonna be a pirate.”</p><p>“Really?” Sabo asked, sounding excited, and when Ace glanced over at him, he was pushing himself up on his elbows and grinning, despite his swelling eye and the still-bleeding cut above it. “Me too!”</p><p>And despite himself, Ace grinned back.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Shanks had some of the biggest wings Luffy had ever seen. He thought they might even have been bigger than Gramps’. They were a greyish brown at the top that shifted to a reddish-orange midway down, before fading out to white at the feather-tips. Shanks had one of them idly stretched out partway at his side as he leaned on the bar to smile at Makino in that way that made her laugh, and Luffy was playing with his feathers.</p><p>“Hey, Shanks, how come yours are so big?” he spoke up, interrupting the playful conversation across the bar.</p><p>Shanks grinned. “Well, you know what they say about a man’s-” he started, and that was as far as he got before Makino threw a wet dishrag at his face, cutting him off unceremoniously.</p><p>“<em>Shanks!</em>” she scolded.</p><p>Shanks just tipped his head back and cackled, letting the dishrag fall to the floor. Luffy frowned, glancing between the two of them. “What?”</p><p>Shanks grinned and ruffled his hair roughly. “Don’t worry about it, Anchor. You’ll understand when you’re older.”</p><p>“But I wanna know now!”</p><p>“No, you <em>don’t</em>,” Makino cut in firmly, setting a cup of juice down in front of him that immediately thoroughly captured his attention, which in turn set Shanks off into another laughing jag.</p><p>“Anyways,” Shanks said once he’d regained his composure. “T’answer your question, there’s no real rules for how big wings turn out to be. Lot of it depends on what kinda bird you are- bird of prey wings, like mine, are usually bigger. And wingspan is usually at least your height and a half, if I remember right. It gets pretty muddy after that.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “All the haoushoku users I’ve ever met have had pretty big wings, too…”</p><p>Luffy frowned, trying to imitate the unfamiliar word. “Ha-haosh…?”</p><p>Shanks blinked. “Ah, that’s nothing you need to worry ‘bout yet, kiddo. Like I was saying, normally you could make a good guess from height and species, but you’re not done growin’ yet, and, well-”</p><p>“I’m not a bird!” Luffy filled in with a snicker, and fluttered his wings somewhat clumsily at his sides. They always felt like they were a little too big for his body, and he wasn’t very good at keeping them under control. Makino had tried for several hours once to get him to keep them still and close to his back before giving up and just calling them <em>expressive</em> with a laughing kind of sigh.</p><p>“Bingo,” Shanks said, downing the last of his drink and then waving at Makino for a refill. “So there’s no tellin’, with yours. Hafta wait and see.”</p><p>“But I <em>hate</em> waiting!”</p><p>Shanks just laughed.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Ace watched from the woods as Garp stormed up to the bandits’ longhouse, dragging a ridiculously loud brat along after him, and held a brief argument with Dadan.</p><p>He was just about to slip away into the underbrush and avoid the training session that seemed likely to be incoming when something caught his eye. The kid’s wings were batting furiously at the air as he wriggled in Garp’s grip. They weren’t grown enough to give him any real movement yet, but nonetheless they captured Ace’s attention immediately.</p><p>They were red, a little big on his body, and featherless. Bones and taught skin, bat wings or demon wings- same as Ace’s. Just the same as Ace’s.</p><p>Something he couldn’t put a name to swelled up in his chest, in the back of his throat, and he immediately swallowed it back and stomped it down. It wasn’t like he was going to have anything to do with the kid- Luffy, apparently. He could already tell the brat was going to get on his nerves, and he didn’t need any annoyances.</p><p>He and Sabo had their project to work towards, anyways. They were already more than self-sufficient. If it wasn’t for the training he got traversing the mountain paths every day, he would have moved out months ago.</p><p>He didn’t need anything from anyone. He definitely didn’t need anything from<em> Luffy</em>.</p><p>No matter if Luffy had demon wings, too.</p><p>So he spat in Luffy’s face and then ignored him completely, and figured that would be the end of it.</p><p>It wasn’t.</p><p>The kid seemed to latch onto him, and clung on no matter how hard Ace stonewalled him. He dogged his footsteps like an overenthusiastic puppy, tripping over his own clumsy wings, and he <em>never shut up</em>. He talked about himself, asked endless questions about Ace no matter how many went unanswered, and wouldn’t stop jabbering on, including about <em>wings</em>, Ace’s absolute least-favorite topic.</p><p>Ace had already hated him almost on sight, but Luffy kept finding new ways to get on his nerves.</p><p>And then there was Porchemy, and the treasure, and- well.</p><p>Luffy’s wings had rope burns from how tight he’d been tied when they finally got him down, livid and dark against their usual bright red. If not for his weird rubber powers, the fragile bones that gave them structure would have surely been shattered. Nothing but a stroke of luck had spared him flightlessness.</p><p>Ace told himself he didn’t care, but there was something especially cathartic about smashing Porchemy’s face in nonetheless.</p><p>And if afterwards, Luffy’s blunt honesty and gratitude and <em>goodness</em> made something warm up in his chest- that was nobody’s business but his own.</p><p>If Luffy could be so good, smile so bright and laugh so loud and love so hard while having wings like <em>that</em>- well.</p><p>It was, maybe, something to think about.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“You guys are lucky you don’t have feathers,” Sabo grumbled, struggling to stretch one of his wings around into his lap.</p><p>“Huh?” Luffy and Ace chorused almost in unison, sounding equally baffled. Luffy continued, tipping his head curiously to one side, “How come?”</p><p>“They <em>suck</em> to groom,” Sabo said emphatically, tugging a crooked feather loose. “And they’re super hard to reach- real birds can turn their heads all the way ‘round to reach ‘em, we should be able to do that-”</p><p>“I can do that!” Luffy volunteered, grabbing himself by the hair and wrenching his head around in demonstration.</p><p>Ace snorted. “That’s cause you’re weird, Luffy,” he said. Luffy let his head snap back around to stick his tongue out. “Anyways, Sabo, you shoulda just told us you were having trouble, stupid,” he continued, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Luff and me can help.”</p><p>“Yeah!” Luffy agreed, nodding so hard his head bounced a little.</p><p>Sabo blinked.</p><p>Ace caught the look on his face, and frowned. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>Of course Ace and Luffy wouldn’t attach any special importance to it, they were both orphans. They’d never really had a family to teach them stuff like this, and they didn’t have feathers to worry about anyways. Nobody had ever told them that grooming was a <em>family </em>thing, the way his mother had drilled it into his head while yanking feathers loose with such force it stabbed and sometimes bled.</p><p>(<em>Neatness</em> was very important, when it came to the wings of the people of High Town.)</p><p>He’d assumed, after running away from home, that he’d just take care of it himself for the rest of his life, now that he didn’t have a family anymore. But that had been silly, hadn’t it? He had a family right here.</p><p>“Nothin’s wrong,” he said, shifting around to face away from them, spreading out his wings. “Go on, then.”</p><p>Luffy scrambled over immediately as Ace dropped down to sit crosslegged at Sabo’s back.</p><p>“Okay,” Ace muttered, almost too quiet for Sabo to hear. “Just pull out the crooked ones, right? Easy.”</p><p>“The broken ones too, right?” Luffy asked.</p><p>“Yeah, <em>obviously</em>-”</p><p>Sabo smiled to himself as they bickered, and a moment later, a bent feather that had been bugging him for weeks right at the center of his back was tugged away, followed by another, and another. Ace and Luffy were a lot more cautious with his wings than his parents had ever been- it was kind of incongruous, given how rambunctious they were, but he couldn’t deny it was nice.</p><p>There was a long stretch of silence, punctuated only by the soundless whispers of feathers falling to the treehouse floor, when Luffy broke it with, “Your feathers are really pretty, Sabo!”</p><p>Sabo couldn’t help but grin. “Yeah?”</p><p>“Yeah!” Luffy said. “They’re really, really blue! Like the ocean!”</p><p>Sabo picked up one of his own fallen blue-and-black-and-white feathers from the rough-hewn boards and twirled it in his fingers, watching the sunlight play off the bright, iridescent blue. “Huh,” he said. “I guess they are.”</p><p>Blue like the ocean. Like freedom.</p><p>Ace snickered and muttered something about pretty birds under his breath, and Sabo promptly snapped a wing up to smack him in the face. Ace yelped and tumbled backwards, taking Luffy with him, and scattering Sabo’s feathers all across the treehouse.</p><p>Sabo let himself fall backwards along with them, landing on his back with his wings splayed flat beneath him, and laughed and laughed and laughed.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“You can’t be scared of falling,” Sabo said, sounding slightly exasperated. And then, “You <em>bounce</em>.”</p><p>Luffy, predictably, immediately bristled. “I’m not scared of anything! I jus’ don’t know what I’m supposed to do once I’m falling!”</p><p>Well, that was… slightly more fair, Ace supposed.</p><p>“You open your wings,” he said dryly, “and you flap ‘em.”</p><p>The three of them were seated side-by-side-by-side on the highest sturdy branch with a clear shot to the forest floor that they could find, a good fifty or sixty feet off the ground. Three pairs of sandalled feet dangled into thin air, far above the indistinct green blur of the grass and underbrush below.</p><p>“Yeah, but,” Luffy said, “my wings are-” and then he grabbed one of his wings and twisted it in a way that still made Ace inwardly cringe in sympathy (not that he’d ever admit that), even though he knew it didn’t hurt Luffy. Bones just weren’t meant to <em>bend</em> like that, and wings were ordinarily so <em>breakable</em>-</p><p>“That’s true,” Sabo admitted. “But still, you won’t <em>know</em> if you can fly with them unless you try, right? I mean, your legs are rubber, but you can still walk.”</p><p>Luffy screwed up his face. “I guess!” he said. “Okay… can I count down?”</p><p>“Sure,” Sabo said.</p><p>Luffy nodded determinedly. “One… two…” he muttered, shifting his weight, digging his fingers into the branch and glaring at the grass far below like it was his personal nemesis.</p><p>Ace sighed and shoved him off the branch.</p><p>“<em>Ace!</em>” Sabo yelped immediately, snapping around to glare at him.</p><p>“What?” Ace said defensively. “He wasn’t gonna jump! And he bounces anyways, you said so yourself!”</p><p>They both automatically leaned over the edge of the branch just in time to see Luffy smack into the ground at full force and bounce a good twenty feet up, and they both winced.</p><p>“Well,” Sabo said. “At least it doesn’t hurt him.”</p><p>When Luffy hit the apex of his bounce, though, his wings snapped open properly, instead of flailing uselessly like they had been as he fell, and started flapping in real tandem. The first beat slowed his fall dramatically, the second brought him almost to a stop midair, and the third actually brought him up a bit.</p><p>“Ace! Sabo! Look!” he hollered, cupping his hands to his mouth. “I did it!”</p><p>Calling up to them clearly broke his fragile concentration, though, and his wingbeats stuttered and he promptly tumbled out of the air again. And this time when he hid the ground, he only bounced a little before landing flat on his face on the forest floor.</p><p>Ace and Sabo traded matching grins before they both exploded into enthusiastic cheers, and when Luffy peeled his face up off the ground, grass stains on his shirt and dirt clinging to his cheeks, his smile was bright enough to rival the sun.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>(Outlook threatened to clip Sabo's wings, if he caught him trying to run away again. There were surgeons in High Town who would do it- clip the last pinion joint to stop the primaries growing. It was preferred over full amputation, because the wings could stay, beautiful and and impressive, just rendered useless. And Sabo really did have such pretty wings.)</p><p>(In the end, it wasn't necessary. The bazooka blast did it for him.)</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Ace got quieter, after Sabo died.</p><p>He spent a lot of time looking at the ocean, and didn’t argue or snap as much, even if Luffy did something that would normally set him off into a full-blown fury, like steal his food.</p><p>Luffy hated it.</p><p>He almost tightened his hands into fists, but caught himself at the last minute and forced himself to relax his fingers. He was carrying something really important, and he couldn’t crush it.</p><p>Ace was sitting on the cliff, legs dangling over the edge, black bat wings half-curled around himself protectively, like he was hugging himself. Luffy sat down next to him and followed his line of sight. Goa was visible in the distance, a bright white spot beside the ocean, all clean and perfect if not for the ugly black burn scar still scorched into the ground beside it.</p><p>“I hate them,” Ace said quietly, without looking away from the white city. “Sabo just wanted to be free. What’s wrong with that?”</p><p>He sniffled angrily, and scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. Luffy bit his bottom lip hard to keep himself from saying anything, and instead held out his hand to show Ace what he was holding.</p><p>Ace finished wiping the angry tears out of his eyes and opened them, and then went quiet, and very still.</p><p>“Those are-”</p><p>“Found ‘em under some of the blankets in the treehouse,” Luffy said, looking down at his sandals. “They were sorta stuck in the floorboards.”</p><p>Ace didn’t say anything, or move to accept the gift. Luffy pushed the pair of feathers into Ace’s hands a little more insistently, and after a moment he took them.</p><p>For a long moment, the two of them just looked at the pair of blue feathers, glittering in the midday sunlight, ocean blue as the waves below. Luffy found himself wiping at his own eyes, sniffling and hiccupping under his breath, while Ace sat quiet and still as a statue beside him.</p><p>Suddenly, Ace said, “Give me your hat.”</p><p>Luffy blinked. “Huh?”</p><p>“Just do it.”</p><p>And if it was anybody else he might not have done it, handed over his treasure without any explanation, but it was Ace, so Luffy handed the straw hat over without complaint, and watched as Ace spun it around in his lap and tucked one of the blue-black-white feathers inside the red ribbon, stabbing it in with enough force enough to embed the shaft into the straw.</p><p>“There,” Ace said, and pushed the hat back onto Luffy’s head, shoving down a little too hard like he always did so the brim flopped down over his eyes and he had to shove it back up. “Looks good,” he said after a moment. “Take good care of that, okay?”</p><p>Luffy nodded, swiped at his eyes uselessly, and then nodded some more. “Yeah!”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Koala wasn’t the first person Sabo met who didn’t have wings.</p><p>He’d been with the Revolutionary Army for three years when he met her, and they saw fishmen and former slaves on an almost constant basis. He was long since used to seeing wingless people. Plenty of escapees even worked with the Army, choosing to forge the injustice that had been done to them into righteous fury instead of leaving it to sit as misery and self-pity.</p><p>“Why do the Tenryuubito do that?” he’d asked Kuma once, when he was eleven. “Cut their wings off.”</p><p>Kuma had sighed, and sounded very tired, and very sad. “Partly, it’s for practical reasons. It makes it harder for them to escape,” he said. “The Red Line is a perilous climb, without wings to catch you if you fall. But also… it’s meant to be a message.”</p><p>Sabo frowned. “A message?”</p><p>Kuma nodded solemnly. “Remember, they think of themselves as gods,” he said. “They claim the heavens as theirs. They find the idea of slaves flying freely through their domain to be… sacrilege, I suppose.”</p><p>Sabo stared. “That’s <em>it</em>?”</p><p>“That’s it.”</p><p>“But- that’s-” he started, before stuttering uselessly to a halt. <em>Cruel</em> didn’t seem to begin to cover it. The idea of stealing <em>wings</em> just to feed one’s one god complex- he always felt with every new depravity of the noble class, they couldn’t possibly sink any lower, but they always, always found a way.</p><p>“You’re angry,” Kuma had said, and he was always hard to read, but Sabo thought he’d sounded approving. “That’s good. Hold onto that. Remember it every time you’re in a hard fight. That anger is why the Revolutionary Army exists.”</p><p>Sabo remembered that conversation when he met Koala. She entered Revolutionary Headquarters for the first time when he was thirteen, a silent shadow at Hack’s side as he explained to Dragon that he’d found a new recruit.</p><p>Sabo watched the way her eyes darted around the room, lingering on every pair of wings, and the way her shoulders tightened like she was trying to mantle herself in feathers that weren’t there anymore, and immediately resolved to do something about it.</p><p>The next day provided an opportunity. She drifted near him in the gym while some of the other younger recruits were running through basic training exercises, and did a very good job of trying not to stare.</p><p>“You can ask, y’know,” Sabo said, and she startled, twitching away from him. “I don’t mind.”</p><p>Koala looked at him a moment longer, guarded and wary like she was searching for a trap, before she said, “Okay. What happened to your wing?”</p><p>Sabo grinned. “I dunno!”</p><p>Koala blinked twice, and then, sounding too baffled to remember to be frightened, “How can you <em>not know? </em>You’re missing a wing!”</p><p>Sabo shrugged and fanned out his wings- or, really, one wing, and one feathered stub. The explosion had blown his left wing away almost in its entirety. One of the doctors had said once, when they thought he was sleeping, that he might have instinctively tried to use it to shield himself, and taken almost the full brunt of the bazooka blast on it.</p><p>If there was one thing he was glad he couldn’t remember, it was that.</p><p>“I got blown up,” he said matter-of-factly. “By a Tenryuubito. Can’t remember anything about it, or before it.”</p><p>What he said and didn’t say was, <em>they took my wings, too</em>.</p><p>She heard it anyways, though. He could tell.</p><p>They got along pretty well, from then on.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The day Ace set out to sea, the sunshine was brilliant. It glittered off the waves, and off the bright blue feather stitched into the brim of his new hat. His wings, big and pure black and featherless, soaked up the daylight, warm at his back, spread wide and impossible not to notice. That didn’t really bother him, though, not like it might have used to, because-</p><p>Luffy was waving with both hands, bouncing on his toes and then using his wings to boost himself a few feet off the ground with each jump. He’d never <em>really</em> gotten the hang of flying, no matter how much Ace and Sabo- and later just Ace- had tried to teach him. Something about his devil fruit’s effect on his wings prevented him from really ever achieving proper consistent lift. But Luffy was fine with that, so Ace supposed it was alright.</p><p>It wasn’t like anything as small as that would ever stop his little brother from achieving everything he dreamt of, after all.</p><p>He could feel the sea breeze on his wings, cool and fresh and promising. He reached up to touch Sabo’s feather, carefully stitched into his hat. He’d had to ask Makino for sewing lessons in order to make sure the feathers never came loose, though they’d wound up coming in handy anyways with how often he and Luffy tore their clothes up.</p><p>He grinned up at Luffy and Dadan and waved goodbye as the little sails of his tiny boat caught the wind, and he was off.</p><p>Time to fly.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Luffy's first day at sea had gone pretty well, by his reckoning. He'd won a fight and made a new friend, after all. </p><p>“Your wings are kinda little, huh?” he said with unabashed curiosity, leaning quizzically forward and tipping his head a little to one side, rocking slightly with the motion of the waves. Evening was falling over the ocean, soft and dark, but there was still enough light to see by. “They look kinda funny too. They’re all fuzzy.”</p><p>Coby ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Um, yeah… they’ve always been like that. They’re not… big enough to fly or anything… otherwise I would’ve flown away from Alvida. At this rate, they probably won’t ever be.” He sounded more than a little downcast, glancing away at the waves.</p><p>“Huh,” Luffy said. “What kinda bird?”</p><p>“What…?” Coby echoed before the question seemed to register. “Oh. I, um, don’t know. My mom always said it’d be obvious when I got older, but, um…”</p><p>“Huh,” Luffy said again. “How old’re you?”</p><p>“Sixteen.”</p><p>“What, really?”</p><p>Coby turned red and mumbled something about baby fat. Luffy just tossed his head back and laughed.</p><p>“Anyways, I wouldn’t worry ‘bout it!” he finally said, bright and easy. “You can still be a marine if you can’t fly, right? So what’s it matter?”</p><p>Coby glanced down at the flimsy wooden planks beneath their feet and smiled, just a little. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.”</p><p>“Course I’m right!” Luffy agreed immediately. “It would be really dumb to let something like that get in the way of your dream!”</p><p>Coby didn’t respond directly, but he was still smiling when he glanced up at the horizon and said, “I think we should make Shells Town by morning.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this fic primarily inspired by <a href="https://sabocho.tumblr.com/post/615702908484321280/this-is-just-an-excuse-to-draw-sabo-w-just-one">sabocho's excellent art</a> go support them!!</p><p>this story is super mega disorganized and that's mostly because it just started out as a bunch of drabbles that sort of coalesced into a vague outline of a story but uhhh hope you enjoyed it anyways!</p><p>anyways as for who's got what wings-<br/>sabo: blue jay<br/>dadan: pigeon<br/>shanks: red-tailed hawk<br/>makino: violet-green swallow<br/>luffy, ace and garp: <s>dragon</s> demon wings- red, black, and white, respectively</p><p>first one to guess coby gets a gold star</p><p>i have thoughts about quite a few other characters in this au (specifically the strawhats, law and the donquixotes, and hancock and her sisters) as well but that reached a point where it needed to be like. multiple other stories, so. uhhh stand by for that.</p><p>title is from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dwuzqF6huc">learn to fly</a> by the foo fighters.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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